Book review: Springsteen fans come through in For You’

Wednesday

Dec 26, 2007 at 12:01 AMDec 26, 2007 at 3:03 AM

“For You,” Lawrence Kirsch’s mammoth hardcover collection of Springsteen stories from the rock troubadour’s most devoted fans, is not a well-written book in the traditional sense. But somehow, the less polished pieces add to the book’s charm — and taken together with some of the more insightful entries they help form what, in the end, turns out to be a truly fascinating and moving collection.

Peter Chianca

“For You,” Lawrence Kirsch’s mammoth hardcover collection of Springsteen stories from the rock troubadour’s most devoted fans, is not a well-written book in the traditional sense — some of the accounts meander along for a while before just sputtering out, or seem to exist only for the purpose of imparting Too Much Information. (There are some things even your fellow Springsteen junkies don’t need to know, like which Bruce album was playing during your first sexual experience. That’s just icky.)

But somehow, those less polished pieces add to the book’s charm — and taken together with some of the more insightful entries they help form what, in the end, turns out to be a truly fascinating and moving collection.

In reading “For You,” at first it’s hard to believe that one performer could possibly have touched this many people this deeply — lifted them from depression, kept them from suicide, helped them through divorce or the death of a parent, or worse, a child. But story after story reveals just how much Springsteen’s music and his almost superhuman presence on the concert stage have penetrated people’s lives and, to the extent that it’s possible for music to do so, made them whole.

In fact, there’s a running theme of these reminiscences, one that is sure to warm any Bruce fan’s heart: that you are not crazy. Not crazy for seeing dozens or even hundreds of concerts; not crazy for feeling that Springsteen’s songs and lyrics have actually helped carry you through some of life’s toughest moments; not crazy to think that this man whom you’ve never met has and continues to fill some kind of void in your life.

In one story, a mother who’d lost an infant to a bacterial infection and miscarried a baby a few months later talks about going to a Springsteen concert under doctor’s orders. “It was the first time I had heard ‘Land of Hope and Dreams,’ and I listened intently to each and every word as if Bruce were singing directly to me,” she writes. “I started laughing, crying, dancing, celebrating, and mourning. I was thankful for that moment when Bruce’s words reached inside the deepest part of me and touched my heart. I knew I’d survive.”

Many of the stories are about Springsteen’s songs forming a connection between friends, future spouses or parents and their children. One man talks about taking his son to a concert at a time when the boy was starting to grow apart from him. The son knows his father is hoping to hear “Bobby Jean,” and when Bruce plays it, “I feel a tug on the small finger of my left hand, and my son firmly wraps his hand around mine and squeezes as hard as his 10-year-old strength will allow … At least for now, he is my friend till the end.”

Accompanying the stories is an amazing collection of archival photos, many taken by the contributors, from throughout Springsteen’s career, offering glimpses from his young gypsy days right up until today. But in the end, it all comes back to the stories.

Some of them have a striking emotional rawness that might have been lacking had they been written by actual “writers.” These are souls laid bare, and some of the more personal accounts are almost painful to read, but their effect in the end is similar to that of a good Springsteen song — they make you feel the hopes and dreams of regular people on a level deeper than just what the words say.

I can’t help but wonder if Springsteen will read the book. Part of me thinks that he shouldn’t — who needs the burden of living up to such colossal expectations? But on the other hand, as anyone who’s seen him in concert knows, there’s no way he could be trying any harder than he is right now — to entertain, to enlighten, maybe to change a few minds, and to give voice to the dreams and disappointments that the rest of us may not know how to express.

In short — to quote the Boss — to take a knife and cut this pain from our hearts. And judging from the confessions that make up this spectacular collection, he’s succeeding on a grander scale than even he could possibly know.

Peter Chianca is a Gatehouse Media managing editor who maintains the Springsteen blog “Blogness on the Edge of Town” (http://blogs.townonline.com/Springsteen/). For more information on “For You,” visit www.foryoubruce.com.